[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 106 (Friday, July 31, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1495]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E1495]]
 INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO PROVIDE EQUITABLE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN 
                             WOOL PRODUCTS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. AMO HOUGHTON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 30, 1998

  Mr. HOUGHTON. Mr. Speaker, today I rise, along with my colleague 
Representative Louise Slaughter of Fairport, NY, to introduce a bill to 
correct a harmful competitive imbalance that has developed because of 
an aberration in our tariff schedule. This bill is a companion to the 
one recently introduced by the two Senators from New York, Daniel 
Patrick Moynihan, Al D'Amato along with Senator Arlen Specter of 
Pennsylvania.
  The Chicago based M. Wile & Co., produced fine quality suits in 
Dunkirk, NY. M. Wile recently closed down their Dunkirk operation; 200 
employees were left out of work. The company's Buffalo office is also 
in danger because of this anomaly in the U.S. tariff schedule.
  You may have heard of a company called Hickey-Freeman. Hickey-Freeman 
has produced fine quality suits in Rochester, NY, for nearly a century. 
Unfortunately, the U.S. tariff schedule now makes it difficult for 
Hickey-Freeman to produce such fine suits in the United States. 
Learbury, in Syracuse, NY, also imports high quality wool for use in 
their suits.
  The fact is that companies like M. Wile, Hickey-Freeman, and Learbury 
must import very high quality wool fabric used to make men's and boy's 
suits. To do so, they pay a tariff of 31.7 percent. They compete with 
companies that import finished wool suits from a number of countries. 
If the imported suits are from Canada, the importers pay no tariff at 
all due to NAFTA regulations. I'm told that Canadian shipments of men's 
suits into the United States have gone from 0 to 1.5 million in the 
past 10 years.
  If from Mexico, the tariff is 11 percent. If from other countries 
around the world, 20.2 percent. Domestic tailors are clearly at a 
disadvantage. The tariff structure forces an incentive to import 
finished suits from aboard, which takes critical jobs away from 
American suit manufacturers.
  The results of this have been noticed in western and central New 
York, and Pennsylvania. In fact, production of fine suits in the United 
States has dropped by 40 percent, and the number of employees has been 
cut from 58,000 to around 30,000. These are high paying jobs that have 
been lost to this unfair tariff schedule.
  This problem can be corrected before the entire industry is lost. 
This bill can be an important tool to correct the problem. It suspends 
these tariffs through December 31, 2004 on the highest grade of wool--
called Super 90's--produced only in a limited way domestically. It 
would also reduce the tariffs for slightly lower grades of fabric--
Super 70's and 80's--to 20.2 percent, which is the same as the tariff 
on finished wool suits other than those from Canada or Mexico which 
receive more favorable treatment under NAFTA.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill corrects a critical problem for suit 
manufacturers such as M. Wile, Hickey-Freeman, and Learbury. I urge my 
colleagues to support this important effort to save American jobs.

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